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Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

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Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#121

Post by kulahan »

nemomarx wrote: post #113
carlosjobim wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you say that? Because the group of men fit to fight such a war would rather rebel against the government than fight a brother war. From lowest recruit to highest general.

how are they handling being deployed to US cities right now? I think they could be swayed into it with the right rhetoric.

The US military being deployed is doing things like cleaning up trash, guarding federal buildings, and otherwise goofing off. There's zero indication they'd be easily swayed. Reserve Generals have directly stated they will defend the state, not follow the Presidents orders.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#122

Post by michaelt »

bonesss wrote: post #117
gpm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists. Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII,…

> Nukes might fly overhead Numerous Canadian sites, military and NORAD, were and surely are on first strike lists from the USSR and later Russia. The largest established combined bi-national military command in the world involves a fair amount of shared risk.

I think "Nukes might fly overhead and end the world [...] but other than that we were safe" agrees that Canada would not thrive during a global thermonuclear war.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#123

Post by qball »

1986 wrote: post #92
qball wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem. It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their in…

We have the opposite problem, where if you live in NYC or LA your vote basically doesn't matter at the national level

Yet, that compromise means NYC and LA can still field an all-volunteer army of people who tend not to be from NYC and LA.

Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, demonstrably, cannot do that.

Which of the two strategies do you think give the cities a greater chance of survival?

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

jjk166 wrote: post #96
gpm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.

The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US, to say nothing of obliterating the geopolitical system. Attempting to annex in any way shape or form is currently nothing more than the musings of an old man, the only way any territorial changes could happen are through peaceful, mutually agreed upon transfer. If the US were to seriously entertain the…

> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US

Ok, maybe, but then:

> In a war between the US and Canada, the US would be able to launch large assaults with professional soldiers in multiple places with no natural obstacles over the short distance between their origin and objectives.

Given your earlier claim, surely you must believe that if they defied your wisdom and chose this course of action, they wouldn't be able to do this because they would have to devote a substantial fraction of their military capacity to domestic counterinsurgency efforts, leaving far more limited combat power to actually execute the invasion?

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#125

Post by palmotea »

gpm wrote: post #59
ninalanyon wrote: post #53

24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number. Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.

The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists. Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII,…

> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada.

The chance of Canada being invaded didn't change at all in November. The amount of hyperbole about Trump has been utterly astounding, and fears of an Canadian invasion are an instance of that.

And my sense is that actually a fair amount of the bad stuff Trump has done (though definitely not all) is a direct result of the overreactions to him [1], so it's probably best not to overreact.

[1] E.g. Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office to damage and destroy him. They failed, he got re-elected, and now only in his second term, he's corrupted the Justice Department into a club to attack those very same people.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#126

Post by jszymborski »

carlosjobim wrote: post #108
silisili wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US What makes you say that? I could see heavy protests, even violent protests, as it's not something Americans want. I'm not sure I could envision any semblance of an actual civil war, though, but perhaps I'm underestimating things.

> What makes you say that? Because the group of men fit to fight such a war would rather rebel against the government than fight a brother war. From lowest recruit to highest general.

Much as is the case in the US and Canada, families and friends transcend the borders of Ukraine and Russia. That wasn't enough to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Americans enjoy much, much broader freedoms of expression (albeit that's also under great threat), I wouldn't imagine the reaction from our American "brothers" would be much different from Russian when it invaded its "brother".

Your use of "brother" is apt. There's a Ukrainian joke that goes something like:

"A Ukrainian man and a Russian man are walking together. They happen upon a $20 bill on the sidewalk. The Russian man says, 'Let us share it as brothers'. The Ukranian man says 'No, let us share it equally'".

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#128

Post by Teever »

silisili wrote: post #103
jjk166 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US, to say nothing of obliterating the geopolitical system. Attempting to annex in any way shape or form is currently nothing more than the musings of an old man, the only way any territorial changes could happen are through peaceful, mutually agreed upon transfer. If the US were to seriously entertain the…

> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US What makes you say that? I could see heavy protests, even violent protests, as it's not something Americans want. I'm not sure I could envision any semblance of an actual civil war, though, but perhaps I'm underestimating things.

If the United States tries to seize Canada they will do so after a protracted blockade in winter that coincides with air strikes on Canadian infrastructure.

A lot of Canadians talk big talk about some sort of insurgency like Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam but all those places have borders with other countries that can enable smuggling of supplies to the resistance.

Canada will be blockaded and after a period of cold and hunger the Canadian people will give up.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#129

Post by scotty79 »

wagwang wrote: post #119
scotty79 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not teaching your son a second language so he can escape the country with draft as soon as he's 18 is evil. You are obligated to give your child tools to choose his future if your government is trying to deny him that choice.

No you have a duty and obligation to the society that raised you.

Your obligations are your choices. Only a slave has obligations without freely chosing them.

Re: Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k

#130

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jjk166 wrote: post #96
gpm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.

The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US, to say nothing of obliterating the geopolitical system. Attempting to annex in any way shape or form is currently nothing more than the musings of an old man, the only way any territorial changes could happen are through peaceful, mutually agreed upon transfer. If the US were to seriously entertain the…

> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility

Of course it is. Troops would just be moved to “temporarily” occupy shit we want. (Or move to liberate Alberta.) Hell, you could probably do it with ICE agents.

> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US

You’d take up arms against the U.S. because it invaded Canada?

Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would others. It would be brushed way as an another atrocity.

> 300,000 poorly trained reservists aren't going to seriously change the calculus

It’s people you have to shoot through. Hong Kong versus Ukraine. Raises the costs from a low-effort political gambit to a real military campaign.

This comment reminds of one on HN from Kharkiv on the eve of the invasion. If you assume something can’t happen or cannot be opposed, that’s indistinguishable from an invitation for an autocrat.

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